A United Nations team is set to arrive in the Malian capital of Bamako tomorrow to support the national authorities in their quest to restore constitutional order and territorial integrity.
The advance team, led by Joao Honwana of the Department of Pol

Saturday January 19, 2013, 6:34 am
There are many more Muslims killed by Muslims than anyone else. The UN is the only appropriate group to attempt a resolution. NOBODY can afford to see another Al Quaida-like situation in western Africa. These jihadists are like weeds.....get rid of them here--they pop up there!

Saturday January 19, 2013, 6:39 am
Let's hope that the UN troops will actually DO something this time instead of, like they usually do, just stand and watch people being hacked to death, raped or beheaded, like they did in Rwanda, where they wouldn't even let the terrified victims to shelter in their compound. At least the French are there and they may actually DO something and help destroy these savage Islamist brutes. Hopefully they'll destroy them all so they just won't move to another place and commit their atrocities all over again.

Sunday January 20, 2013, 6:52 am
Noted, tweeted, tweeted, read, and shared. Sort of like the fox guarding the chicken house if the UN does nothing to stop the attacks. I am getting really depressed, and I live in the United States where the Muslim Brotherhood doesn't have that much power.

The force is not a "U.N. force" because the U.N. does not actually have any forces of its own. They are primarily Africans, with France lending air-support and some ground-forces, and multiple other countries lending logistical support, primarily in the form of transport-aircraft. African soldiers fight. They don't have NATO technology or training, but their political leaders let them do their jobs. The U.N. is sending a few bureaucrats to try to organize what it can, but the resolution just gave U.N. support to African forces that was already present or being deployed.

Perhaps more importantly, the original rebels, the MNLA, have declared support for the government in the fight against religious extremists. This is another 3,000 people already on-site. Perhaps more importantly, this means local logistical and intelligence-support in a deeply landlocked region. The logistical support will likely vastly increase the numbers of soldiers and materiel that can be effectively deployed while the intelligence-support should help quite a lot in any offensive against insurgents. Just to compare to Afghanistan and Iraq, the reason there could never be an effective "surge" in Afghanistan is because the area is landlocked, so the forces are limited by how much food, fuel, and ammunition can be brought in through dangerous areas in Pakistan (and apparently some of the European "forces" were forced by their governments to sit on base and tie up a lot of those food-trucks), and the limiting factor in Iraq was target-identification, which was difficult as U.S. forces in particular tend to have trouble working with locals. The monetary costs of the wars were also primarily in logistics as everything had to be shipped in because the locals could not be counted upon to provide for the intervention-forces.

I'm mostly worried that the U.N. "organizers" and the E.U. "trainers" will screw this up.